Tag Archives: haus of dada

In Toronto Canada, an arrogant performance artist declares themself amazing while refusing to show any facial expression.

Photo by Ashley Hurlock for Akhilanda Collaborative

Photo by Haus of Dada

Photo by Angela Chao

Photo by Haus of Dada

Photo by audience member at Black Cat Artspace

Photos by Angela Chao

Photo by Haus of Dada

Photo by Haus of Dada

Photo by Steve Weiss

Photo by Anandam Dance Theatre for Body Break

When we reached out to the haus of dada for comment we received the following message in German via telegraph from curator Fritz Snitz. “Thin(k) Blank Human only does private performances for close friends, artists and cherished audience members and is not interested in speaking with you peoples.” -Ritzy Fritzy

Akhilanda Collaborative is a new creative collective based in Toronto Canada. It began with a circus and film collaboration for MASHUP, a Hercinia Arts Collective Event curated by Kirsten Leila Edwards. Click the link to read the story of how “the way back home” came together and who is involved.

I felt a deep therapeutic need to continue to collaborate with this group. We truly are more than the sum of our parts. When we decided to move ahead we were stuck for an organization name. It was because we were missing someone. As well as Ashley Hurlock, Tamara Arenovich, Lisa Anita Wegner and Ray Cammaert we added Mary-Margaret Scrimger. Here she is below.

And then we were complete. We immediately started a steady stream of creative projects. Live performances, large scale art installations and films. For me this is the ideal addition to my therapeutic art practise. A group who is creatively open, nurturing and understands the emotional landscape. This is work that heals me.

After having the pleasure of working with choreographer Brandy Leary on my performance piece, Sex & Candy Floorshow, I was intrigued when I heard about her 2015 Nuit Blanche piece ,GLACIOLOGY. It is part of curator Christine Shaw’s exhibition Work of Wind along the Toronto Waterfront. Glaciology is a human glacier made of 50 human bodies that slowly sweeps across the Toronto waterfront from dusk until dawn.

My art practice has always been relatively solitary, and for the past three years I have performed solo for Nuit Blanche. I was very much drawn to a different way of working and the opportunity to collaborate with a large group.

At first rehearsal, I was hoping that I was physically strong enough for this project. With the dancers, acrobats and circus performers warming up, I felt unsure. As soon as Brandy started the rehearsal with a performer massage, it felt right. Her meditative style “state work” is very much up my alley. My daily practice involves body work and meditating and I felt Brandy’s concepts for the Glacier made perfect sense. My body knew what to do.

I realized that this piece of 50 bodies was actually about doing nothing. It’s about relaxing and physically giving in to the glacier as a whole. It’s about radical physical listening and gracious waiting with your whole body.

I wasn’t sure about potentially being underneath a pile of people. I dislike crowds, and thought it might be too much for me. What was a surprise was that the glacier felt like being embraced. It was a benevolent place to be. If a foot or elbow was coming toward your head, someone would guide it away. I found the physical safety of the glacier was remarkable. I also found the feeling of being protected intoxicating. In rehearsals, when I was out of the glacier watching, all I wanted was back into the warm safety of the group.

Being in the glacier is one of the peak emotional experiences I’ve had in a performing situation, and we’re still only in rehearsal. I’ve been swept up in the movement of this physical entity of 50 bodies, and it is transformative. The first time I got flipped across the top of the group, I felt such joy. Many of the performers talked about how being in the glacier bends time. An hour in the glacier feels like about 10 minutes, and I am craving the longer sessions that we have scheduled for the actual Nuit Blanche performance. I am trying to figure out how to get this kind of emotional physical work into my daily practisc.

As with any public performance, I look forward to the plethora of images that will be collected throughout the night. Please tag your images #glaciology2015

A glacier composed of 50 human bodies slowly sweeps the city for 12 continuous hours as part of curator Christine Shaw’s exhibition The Work of Wind. Anandam’s Glaciology examines the permanent effects of human and ecological disruptions in the converging wakes of colonialism, globalisation, wars and unsustainable economies by overlapping and contrasting these images with the indelible power of glacial movements across landscapes.

Using the movement of glaciers across landscapes as an entry point, this piece explores states of density, collaboration, collapse, overpopulation, relocation, disruption, environmental tipping points, disappeared people, mass graves, icebergs, and melting ice caps. Glaciology combines site specific performance with human sculpture and choreographic installation to create a surreal, constantly shifting image of bodies as landscape and simultaneously as capsules of history and memory; both human and geological.

My name is Lisa and I am a filmmaker, performance artist, curator, storyteller, light bender and space/time traveller. You inspire me tremendously, and I am writing to express my appreciation for what you have sparked in my work, beginning with Queen of the Parade, my first large-scale performance/fashion/video installation and the work that put me on the map as an artist.

Rise and Fall of The Queen of Jupiter 2016

In 2008, I had hit hard times – I lost my film production company, all my savings, my heart and my mind. I collapsed getting to the Cannes Film Festival in 2008 and spent the next two years largely unable to function. In the Trauma Therapy Department of Women’s College Hospital, I found art therapy. I started a daily art-making practice that saved my life. I had gone offline and expressing myself in art and video was my lifeline, my communication with the outside world.

I remember the exact moment the idea for Queen of the Parade was born: I was walking my dogs and listening to “Marry The Night” after I had been binging on the BBC Series My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding. (I am obsessed with the gloriousness of Gypsy Fashion.)

That night, hearing your lyrics, “I won’t give up on my life/I’m a soldier to my own emptiness/I’m a winner,” affected me profoundly, and set something inside me aflame. In a flash, I pictured myself as an enormous woman in a huge dress with a video screen on the front, with your song resounding in my head. I rushed home and wrote everything down in a crazy, inspired burst. This was the first step toward the 26-foot installation that was part of Toronto’s Nuit Blanche in 2013; during the event itself, I listened to “Marry The Night” on repeat with ear buds while I was twenty feet in the air.

This led to my first commission by Partners in Art, who commissioned a gallery-sized 10-foot Queen. This was a terrific experience that enabled to connect more directly with the audience, and I didn’t want the performance to ever end.

Something was awakened in me and this led to a whole body of work of experimenting on and off the space/ time continuum and speeding up and stretching out moments. I could finally breathe; I felt like I had come alive.

My new performing persona Think(k) Blank Human was born the following Nuit Blanche in Toronto as part of my installation TRIANGLE. I found comfort in her skin, and really came out of myself as a performer.

In 2016, I will be creating The Fall and Rise of The Queen of Jupiter, which feels like the natural progression of my work. This time, I will be kicking off my high heels and putting on Thin(k) Blank Human’s space boots, and I shall rise from a pile of fabric into a 40 foot Alien Queen. Instead of strutting, I will run and dance.

This performance piece will run 33 minutes and I would love permission to use extended versions of “Marry The Night,” “ARTPOP” and “Applause” as the soundtrack for the ascension.

I am approaching Thelma Madine, the Gypsy dressmaker from the series, to design the Queen of Jupiter’s Gown, and I would love to have permission to use those three songs.

This is my story of re-invention, and I feel like this is the first piece I’m presenting that is truly me. I’ve been searching for authenticity through artifice and I finally have landed on something. I feel extremely compelled toward this project. For women who have crashed and burned and for those of us who have gotten up, I feel it is our job to inspire others to get up and stand as tall as we can. You preach this every day, and this is one of the many reasons for my unbridled admiration.Please let me know your thoughts me using your music for The Fall and Rise of The Queen of Jupiter in 2016.

Lisa Anita Wegner is a filmmaker, producer, curator and performer who is accustomed to working in small local art galleries and screening venues in Toronto Canada. Working with established curator Patrick MacCauley, Wegner got a taste of working large-scale when she was the 26 foot tall Queen of the Parade in front of an enormous audience for Scotiabank’s 2013 Nuit Blanche.

This led to several seasons working with performance in multi media environments, exploring soundscapes as well as video. In 2014 Wegner played a lead role in a scripted film, her first in six years, acting as the Caucasian Agent in Will Kwan’s http://www.reelasian.com/festival-events/if-all-you-have-is-a-hammer-everything-looks-like-a-nail/ commissioned by Reel Asian International Film Festival. She brought her team back to create a Ten Foot Queen of the Parade the Partners in Art Annual Fundraiser, which Wegner says felt like her coming out party, meeting the Toronto Art World.

“I can’t stop performing. It was a thrill to be back on a traditional film set for Will Kwan just as much as it is to don by Thin(k) Blank Human outfit and perform my deepest soul searching in my studio. I always knew I loved it but now that it’s a daily practise I truly can not stop.”

Wegner is known for mentoring several artists and filmmakers per season at her studio Haus of Dada, so it makes sense that she would enjoy the benefits of mentorship herself. In a recent meeting with her Anonymous Mentor Artist, Wegner was told to think bigger and focus on the Male Rockstar Swagger that she developed after STARDUST: Life on Jupiter? at The Black Cat in 2014.

And then came the magic words to Wegner’s ears,

“Follow that swagger and dream a breakout show. I can see a collaboration. There might be an opportunity soon, and I’d work with to bring it to life.”

Wegner and her team are currently preparing to lift the curtain and to prepare the world to meet Thin(k) Blank Human Faceless RockStar. Lisa Anita Wegner wants to make her mentor proud.

-Fritz Snitz for Haus of Dada *The Fictitious History of the Haus of Dada* 2015

Another project from the Haus : Lisa Anita Wegner collaborating with a five year old artist on TARGET:

Lisa Anita Wegner, who has always loved unexpected sizing, is looking for extremely small art of any medium for TINY: a group exhibit which will on display for a month entirely in the Windowbox at 1313 Queen Street West. Please submit a jpeg with dimensions or the existing or proposed pieces.

Since Nuit Blanche on October 4th 2014, artist Lisa Anita Wegner has been performing as Thin Blank Human with her face and body completely covered in a white spandex suit. She talks about the surprising experiences of her audience interactions these last weeks as she talks to Fritz Snitz.

In the weeks leading up to Lisa’s third and last Nuit Blanche installation TRIANGLE: Ascension into Another Golden Age, Lisa discovered bending light with mirror film, a practise she calls Light Painting. Her mind was blown open so wide from this discovery she never recovered. In the days leading up to the event Lisa was not able to decide on an outfit for Mama Dada/ Space Guide. Several days before Nuit Blanche it all came together when Lisa found a white spandex morph suit and she never looked back.The Thin Blank Human came to life.Q: On the eve of your Performance/ Projection/ Sculpture installation TRIANGLE: Ascension into Another Golden Age you were interviewed by local news and walked once to The Black Cat as The Think Blank Human, with only a headset and GoPro camera her your head. Tell us about that. A: My outfit really wasn’t coming together, and when I saw the morph suit I felt like I’d found it and I decided to put my original Space Guide outfit on a mannequin and be The Space Guide’s Soul. This also felt right for the light painting that I was excited to do. I decided I was the spirit of Mama Dada who travels through space and time. In the suit I felt comfortable and free, the only thing is I really can’t see. I had an interview with local news and I wore just the suit, the headphones and a GO Pro on my head. I noticed during that quick interview that people stepped and leaned away from me when I approached and talked to them. And stared ay me with with open mouths. Someone on Dundas Street said “that’s a dude” as I passed. I walked once to The Black Cat from Haus of Dada and got similar reactions. The wind was cold on my body and I had an impulse to put a dress over the white morph suit for my own warmth and comfort. Without testing it in advance I put a Mama Dada dress over my suit and went back out. I spent the rest of the night in a performing in a white morph suit and a dress and more obviously a woman I got friendly reactions and TRIANGLE: Ascension into Another Golden Age was a a wild success. That night Thin Blank Human was born.Q: And then you performed a Strip Tease called Nothing To See Here. A: Yes later in October I performed Nothing To See Here at The Canadian Alternative Arts Collective (of which I am proud to be a new member) and here is where the gender issue started to become interesting. That night I didn’t speak. I gestured to the writing on the back of my Flight Suit and then would do various strip tease dances out of the suit. At first an older man said ‘You are spectacular, can I ask if you are a man or a woman?” I answered “I am a woman” and he said “really?” and stared at me longer. I said “yes my name is Lisa” and he seemed not to believe me. During this packed event I stripped out of the flight suit many times. A second man came over and said to me “If you don’t stop that, I’m going to punch you in the face.” I was surprised and responded playfully but didn’t stop. Third guy said “I don’t want to see a man strip. Stop it it’s fucking disturbing.” I said out loud “I am a woman.” I overheard another man say “that is not a woman, no woman would dance like that.” I also heard “no woman would wear that.”Interesting. First of all who cares? These guys care. I was immediately reminded of friend and artist Steven Joseph, who was my MUSE for TRIANGLE, he is a male who is given a hard time on a regular basis by males who get angry with him for looking like a beautiful woman. These small examples led me to believe that I want to further experiment with gender and the morph suit. So my female body shape and female voice do not trump the idea that I’m a man. – October 27 2014.

Fritz Snitz is arranging for Lisa to perform NOTHING TO SEE HERE in New York City in 2015 following a series of performances in downtown Toronto. Tonight for Halloween Haus of Dada presents a Screening/ Performance/ Installation FREE SURGERY on All Hallows Eve where Lisa will be performing as The Faceless Dr. Wegner.

Artist Statement

For as long as I can remember, Story has functioned as a gateway, a way of connecting with myself and others and digging down to the truth of experience. Growing up in Toronto with German as my first language, working in theatre was my means of overcoming shyness and bonding with English speakers, finding common ground in familiar cultural touchstones.
In time, I discovered my desire to express my own stories, and began to explore acting and producing in films. Always searching for authenticity, I was fortunate to be able to surround myself with like-minded people who both taught me and encouraged me to push further with the medium.
After achieving success with my short films, a two-year period of
personal difficulties left me in an emotional darkness; and it was
once again Story and my need to express myself that way, that led me out of it, with forays into intensely personal visual art and film projects that cut even closer to the bone and reconnected me with my authentic self. I am embarking on new multi-media projects that will fearlessly probe for the truth and share the richness and hard-won lessons of my journey.